It has been long known to be used methods and systems for biomechanical analysis of the posture of a cyclist according to his physical characteristics and the type of athletic or sports discipline he/she intends to practice.
With these methods, a user may select the bicycle frame that is most suitable to his/her characteristics, for automatic customized design of its parts, and may adjust the position of the saddle and the handlebar to optimize his/her posture during pedaling, in view of improving both riding comfort and performances.
US2007/0142177 discloses a system for determining and adjusting structural parameters of bicycles according to the postural characteristics of a user.
This prior art system uses a bicycle placed on a roller stand and a plurality of light-emitting indicators, preferably of LED type, which are designed to be placed on the body of the user and on the bicycle during the pedaling action, as well as a camera-type detector for capturing the light emitted by the indicators and to transmit it to a computer. Thus, the detector may record the change of relative position of the various light-emitting indication during exercise.
Software is installed in the computer for comparing the signals received by the detector with reference data stored in a database within the memory of the computer, to provide the optimized handlebar position relative to the ground, and to hence optimize the user's pedaling action.
A first drawback of this prior art system is that, when the position of certain joints of the user's body is detected by light-emitting indicators, the skeletal system can be only roughly approximated, and as a result the calculated position will not be really the best position for user's performances.
This is because the detector is a standard camera, which generates video frames to be later processed by the computer for generating anthropometric data of the user. These video devices are poorly sensitive and only allow reconstruction of numeric data associated with a substantially two-dimensional image, whereby relatively high dimensional error margins are introduced.
A further drawback of this prior art arrangement is that the light-emitting indicators shall be manually positioned by the operator on a user's body, and this increases the risk that they may be located in an inappropriate position with respect to the corresponding joint, thereby reducing measuring accuracy.
Yet another drawback of this prior art system is that certain anthropometric measurements of the user are performed manually, and are thus exposed to frequent errors and approximations. Furthermore, the parameters of the bicycle cannot be adjusted in real time, as the operator is required to stop angle detection to introduce angle values into the computerized system.
Another serious drawback is that the physical characteristics that are recorded at the start are only marginally considered for adjustment of bicycle parameters.
US2012/0323351 discloses a method of making bicycles of a given model with optimized parameters for a given user. The method comprises a first step in which certain physical characteristics of a user, including body weight and height, are acquired for pre-adjustment of the self-adaptive simulator that will be used for the pedaling test.
During exercise on the simulator, the angles of inclination of the pelvis and the knee of the user are recorded manually and later entered into a computer for generating the optimal position of the saddle and handlebar of a bicycle.
A further drawback of these known arrangements is that they allow optimization of bicycle parameters using a limited number of physical parameters of the user.
US2014/0379135 discloses a method and system for optical detection of a bicycle simulator having certain characteristics in common with the present invention.
In light of the above described prior art, one of the technical problems of the present invention may be deemed to be the need of providing a method and a system for biomechanical analysis of the posture of a user, that allows detection, analysis and processing of a plurality of physical data units of the user in an accurate, combined manner, for sizing, representing and providing the parts of a user-customized bicycle.